Janie Porter Barrett

Janie Porter Barrett (9 August 1865-27 August 1948) was an African-American social reformer, educator, and social worker who created the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls as a rehabilitation center for black female delinquents.

Biography
Janie Porter was born in Athens, Georgia in 1865, the daughter of an unknown white father and a former black slave mother. Porter's mother worked as a housekeeper for the white Skinner family, which pampered Porter and educated her in literature and mathematics, giving her a better life than most other African-Americans at the time. However, the Skinners wanted to adopt her and send her to northern schools to live as a white woman, but her mother instead had her sent to the Hampton Institute to be with other black girls. She was trained as an elementary school teacher, and she developed a sense of duty towards her race. She graduated in 1885 and worked as a teacher in rural Dawson, Georgia and then in Augusta, and she taught at Hampton from 1886 to 1889, marrying the school's cashier Harris Barrett. In 1890, she founded the Locust Street Social Settlement, the first African-American settlement organization. In 1908, she was the founding president of the Virginia State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, and, in 1915, she opened the Virginia Industrial School for Colored Girls. She died in 1948, and her school was integrated in 1965.